


through the cold i'll find my way back to you

by nebulastucky



Series: codas [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel-centric (Supernatural), Coda, Episode: s15e18 Despair, First Kiss, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, Title from a Hozier Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27480517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulastucky/pseuds/nebulastucky
Summary: The Empty isn't empty.There's the Empty itself, of course, smiling wickedly with the face of a friend lost long ago.There's Billie, not dead but dying, her every breath a grimace. Her skin is mottled and horrid, and everything about her looks shabbier and more ragged in the not-light of this place.And there's Castiel.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: codas [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/880560
Comments: 20
Kudos: 178





	through the cold i'll find my way back to you

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: i haven't seen any of s15 except for this episode, and i stopped s14 after 3 episodes because life got in the way and i never made my way back to it. i am, however, absolutely batshit insane, so i wrote this over the last 24 hours because it's all i can think about.
> 
> quick shoutout to ella for telling me not to write this for the sake of my mental wellbeing, and also to cría for directly contradicting that by being the only person in my life willing to talk to me about supernatural in the year 2020
> 
> title from it will come back by hozier

The Empty isn't empty.

There's the entity itself, of course, smiling wickedly with the face of a friend lost long ago.

There's Billie, not dead but dying, her every breath a grimace. Her skin is mottled and horrid, and everything about her looks shabbier and more ragged in the not-light of this place.

And there's Castiel.

Castiel, released from the sickly cold grasp that dragged him here, on his knees in defeat and relief in equal measure. Castiel, an Angel fallen in more ways than one, already feeling the tide of his oft-felt misery washing over the joy in his chest but not letting it sink. Castiel, free of the burden he has been all too glad to carry for the last decade.

The Empty looks at him from a throne, and says with Meg’s voice, “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I disagree,” Castiel says, surprised to find he still has a voice. “I think I should’ve done it years ago.”

The relief borders on euphoric. It’s every hunt-gone-sideways-but-still-survived rolled into one, every life saved, every battered and bruised word of prayer heard in the early hours of the morning. It’s a secret held for twelve years and released at the time it would do the most good for the world.

“There’s no way out of this one,” the Empty promises. 

“I know,” Castiel says, and he believes it. He’s not sure he wants a way out. He’s done his part.

“Are you going to be quiet this time?”

This is a difficult question to answer. For the first time, he feels no urge to argue. There is no survival instinct here. He knows he should, based on track record, be looking for a way out, at the very least. But he feels a kind of serenity in this moment, this afterglow of sorts, that distracts the part of him that would pick a fight in any other circumstance. 

He stands. He almost wipes at his knees, out of habit, before remembering that there’s nothing here to dirty them. There’s nothing here at all.

“I think,” he says, “I just might.”

The Empty says nothing, eyes cold and skeptical, and he walks away.

He finds himself at Billie’s side. She has nothing to prop herself up against, so she is on her back, pitiful and ruined, her scythe at her side. Castiel stares at it, and can’t help but wish she had left it behind. A weapon like that could be a real advantage in the fight to come.

“If you’ve come to gloat,” Billie says, pain tracing the lines of her face, “you can save it.”

“In a way,” Castiel says, and he doesn’t have any bitterness or ill will to give her, “I owe you a thank you.”

He should hate her. He should want to sit and watch her draw her last aching breaths. After everything she’s done - to him, to Dean, to the rest of his patchwork little family - she surely deserves what she’s getting. 

But he hears his own voice in his ears, hears himself say  _ I love you _ and mean it in every possible way, and he can’t. He can’t hate her, because like it or not, she gave him that push. He will never see Dean again, and he can hate her for that, but he will make peace with that, eventually. 

He’ll have enough time here to make peace with a lot of things.

* * *

The Empty isn’t empty.

There’s Billie’s scythe, unmoved from the place it lay next to her before she died and disappeared. She took a long time to go, but she went, and that’s all she had to leave behind.

There’s the Empty, still using Meg’s face. Still awake. Still asking for some quiet.

And there’s Castiel, without a word past his lips since the soft,  _ “Oh,” _ that left him when Billie vanished, just walking. He doesn’t have a destination, because there are no destinations here, and he doesn’t know if it counts as a journey without one, but he walks. 

He doesn’t stop. He could be moving in place for all he knows, nothing but void in all directions, but it doesn’t deter him. He walks and walks and walks, footsteps echoing off nothing, and he thinks. There’s not much else to do.

He thinks of home, of earth, and of the battle that might be still waiting to happen or already come and gone. He thinks of Sam and Jack and the world he’s left behind. He thinks of the Impala and how she purrs like a lioness and smiles like a shark.

Mostly, he thinks of Dean, but that’s nothing new. He would think of Dean even if he were dead and disappeared like Billie. He would think of Dean even if he were standing in front of him.

The Empty finds him, occasionally, or he finds it, or they find each other.

“Aren’t you tired?” it asks. From anyone else, those words might be comforting or empathetic.

In truth, Castiel  _ is _ tired. He’s been tired for years. But he can’t - if he stops, he knows it’ll be for good. And he isn’t ready for that. He can’t let go yet. He’s not sure what it is he’s holding onto, but he knows it’ll be gone forever if he stops.

“No,” he says. 

He keeps walking.

* * *

The Empty isn’t empty. 

There’s the quiet, boundless and permanent, a heavy blanket that presses in from every angle.

There’s the Empty, who hasn’t paid a visit in a long time, but still lurks at the not-edges of not-space.

And there’s Castiel, no longer walking. No longer thinking. Very close to no longer being anything at all.

* * *

The Empty isn’t empty.

There’s the quiet, shattered and jagged.

There’s Castiel, awake, and the Empty, furious.

And there’s Jack.

He is tattered and frayed and glowing like a pyre. He calls out, in a voice made of urgency, “Castiel?”

Castiel stands - he doesn’t remember lying down, or sitting up - and Jack’s eyes, burning with white light, find him. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since they last saw each other, but Jack doesn’t look any different to how Castiel remembers him - apart from, of course, the power that crackles at his fingertips and shines from his pores.

“How are you here?” Castiel asks. He stumbles forward, clumsy and forgetful, toward the sun of a boy before him. “This can’t -”

“We won. I’m here to take you home,” Jack says. His voice sounds like a thousand. Then, softer, as Castiel approaches him, “It’s over. It’s done, Cas, we won.”

The halo of light around Jack doesn’t burn like Castiel thinks it ought to. Jack folds into him, at once ethereal and impossibly human, and Castiel remembers what he’s been missing, all this time on his own.

Over Jack’s shoulder, Castiel sees the Empty, and his blood runs cold.

Jack lets him go and turns to face it, his shoulders square and confident. His jaw sets with a determination he could only have learned from the Winchesters. The kind of determination that says  _ no, you move. _

The kind of determination that Castiel fell from Heaven to learn for himself.

“Jack -” he warns. He can’t read the expression on the Empty’s stolen face.

There is a long moment of silence as they size each other up, a cosmic ancient and a boy-shaped god.

Then, the Empty speaks. It says: “You can have him. I want to sleep.”

Jack lays a hand on his shoulder, and Castiel closes his eyes.

* * *

The bunker library isn’t empty.

There’s one table buried in a mountain of books, another cluttered with bowls and candles and bones, and chairs toppled on their sides.

There’s a small crowd of onlookers, some cowering behind the shelves. Two throwing themselves forward into the action. One going farther than the other, looking like he hasn’t slept in a year.

And there’s Castiel, in love with him all over again.

Dean Winchester comes to a stop a foot away from Castiel. He stands there, his face a swirling, unsure mix of hesitation and relief and astonishment, and doesn’t say a word.

He doesn’t speak for so long that Castiel notices the quiet isn’t just him. It’s everywhere. The room holds its breath, and Castiel holds his too, until the novelty of having breath to hold wears off and he can’t do it anymore.

He says, “Hello, Dean.”

Dean’s face splits into a watery grin. “Hey, Cas,” he says, and crushes him in a hug that pushes all the air out of his lungs.

Castiel’s hands land at Dean’s shoulder blades, snaking up his back to make a home out of rough fabric bunched between his fingers. His eyes close, and Dean holds him tighter, and there is nothing else in the world but this.

Into Castiel’s shoulder, where only he can hear, Dean says, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For not saying it back.” 

The words sound in Castiel’s ears and in his head. He doesn’t know if the prayer is intentional, but he feels that pull of  _ longing _ and decides it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, just this.

“Dean, you don’t -”

“No,” Dean says, and he pulls back far enough that Castiel can look him in the eye. “I should have said it back. I should have said it - I should’ve said something a damn long time ago.”

There are hands on Castiel’s face. They’re calloused and hard from a life lived too unfairly, but they’re gentle as they hold him. Tender to match the eyes Castiel knows so well.

“You said - you said it was something you knew you couldn’t have,” Dean whispers. “But, Cas, you’ve had me. You’ve always had me. Ever since - god, who cares since when? You have me. I have  _ been _ yours.”

The bunker library isn’t empty, but when Dean kisses him, slow and soft and worshipful, it may as well be.

“I thought -” Castiel says, when they part. “I thought you didn’t - I thought you  _ couldn’t _ -”

Dean smiles, bashful and sweet, and Castiel falls and falls and falls.

“You were never the brains of the operation, Cas,” he says. “We both know Sammy’s the smart one.”

Dean kisses him again, and again, and again, and  _ oh, _ how wrong Castiel was. There is a certain amount of happiness in saying it, in just being, but it is nothing compared to this. Nothing compared to the having.

* * *

Dean Winchester’s bedroom isn’t empty.

There’s the pile of clothes on the floor, peeled reverently from their owners layer by painstaking layer, a phone charging in the corner, and the gun he keeps under a pillow.

There’s Dean himself, of course, sleeping soundly for the first time in years, maybe.

And there’s Castiel.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](https://sapphicrowena.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/carlyraejervis?s=09/)


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